A circuit designer determines the various functions that are necessary for proper operation of a programmable electronic device being created. Once the designer has determined the required functions, the functions are organized and placed in accordance with available resource constraints regarding the electronic device and the system into which the electronic device will be implemented.
A circuit designer further needs to determine the various interconnections between the functions and configure the input/output pins. Subsequently, the designer needs to configure the functions within the programmable electronic device. Conventionally performed manually, configuration includes placing the functions within the programmable electronic device, mapping the functions for connections, configuring multifunction input/output ports or pins which typically contain multiple registers that require programming. The programming of the registers configure the pin type and drive characteristics of the input/output pins.
Designers commonly use data sheets to describe the electronic circuit they designed and have configured. Subsequent to the configuration of the programmable electronic device, API's (application programming interfaces) are needed in order to interact with the electronic device to instruct the electronic device to perform its embedded functions. The programmer needs to know all of the registers and other technical information required to instruct the programmable electronic device to invoke the embedded functions, e.g., start timing, stop timing, etc. Manual programming is tedious and prone to programming errors and difficult to debug, the process of correcting errors within the programming.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method which provides an user friendly interface for circuit designing, configuration, and programming. It would be further advantageous to provide such a method that assists in the reduction of programming errors. It would be further advantageous to provide such a method which frees designers and programmers from remembering registers and other technical information, such as pin configurations, that invoke the embedded functions within a programmable electronic device.